I think it is more a problem of the English language. Transliterating the Greek equivalent and using seismicoteta would sound real horrible, whereas seismicability could be more usable, but still the suffix â€“icity is fully integrated into the English language.

Lucus Eques wrote:I'd like to pick some Hellenistic brains here for helping me to determine some better alternatives we might employ instead.

To what end? Even when linguistic chimeras are avoided, technical and scientific vocabulary pilfer Greek and Latin largely for convenience. You get a new word that has no other meanings to confuse people with.

I'll always remember wandering with a friend through a giant orchid greenhouse. There was some pretty little thing, and checked out the name: Epidendrum calanthum. Upon-a-tree pretty-flower â€” a singularly useless name to uniquely describe an orchid. The Greek here is simply to give a name to a branch on a taxonomy. Latinity and hellenismos are irrelevant.

I guess even if a word is "received" from another language its meaning is determined how the new user uses it. Biology would not mean what we mean by it if we strictly followed the meaning of the Greek words from which it was derived.

I am not sure and have no idea. I just picked up a dictionary and it came up with this word. I guess it's katharevousa: ancient Greek Î· ÏƒÎµÎ¹ÏƒÎ¼Î¹ÎºÏŒÏ„Î¹Ï‚, Ï„Î·Ï‚ ÏƒÎµÎ¹ÏƒÎ¼Î¹ÎºÏŒÏ„Î·Ï„Î¿Ï‚, and the noun in katharevousa becomes Î· ÏƒÎµÎ¹ÏƒÎ¼Î¹ÎºÏŒÏ„Î·Ï„Î±.

My impression is, there is a slight difference between "genic" and "genetic". "Genic" is referred in a closer sense to the genes, so in modern Greek "Î³Î¿Î½Î¹Î´Î¹Î±ÎºÏŒ" is used, from "Î³Î¿Î½Î¯Î´Î¹Î¿", the gene. "Genetic", "Î³ÎµÎ½ÎµÏ„Î¹ÎºÏŒ" is a more broader term for specimen or breed heredity. Correct me if I'm wrong.

So what's really bugging me is â€” classically â€” is there more reason for -genic as a suffix rather than -genetic? Are there any classical examples of something even remotely similar from which I might draw a comparison or a conclusion?

-gÃªnicopostpositive, conected to -genia and the notion of â€˜origin, descendant line, raceâ€™, in that the suffix -ico works as an adjective creator; therefore, all nouns listed under -genia have adjectives in -gÃªnico, according to the pattern androgenia:androgÃªnico.

Their respective nouns are all considered synonyms / variants as well: antropogenia (1858), antropogÃªnese (1949), and antropogenesia (1899). Houaiss treats the second as the main entry to which the other two point.

Orogenesis, to me, means the process of mountain creation and orogenetic is of course its adjective. For instance (and I have NO idea if the way I read the term is the right one), earthquakes are orogenetic events. I would personally give the same meaning to "orogeny" and "orogenic".

I just cannot see how "orogen" can be synonymous to "mountain range" unless the "-gen" suffix has nothing to do with "genetes" (Î³ÎµÎ½Î­Ï„Î·Ï‚) or genesis or anything of the kind.

As for the -Î¹Î±/-ÎµÏƒÎ¹Ï‚ I am pretty sure (though all my books are still packed) that, at least in the case of genesis, the "s" is part of the stem, genes-is. But with not books available I cannot tell you where that "s" comes from.